Tag Archives: denisovans

This blog contribution aims to be like a good Louisiana seafood gumbo: thick, hearty, spicy, and made up all kinds of finger-licking ingredients (pun intended). There will be some French, which would be apropos, some Latin as well, and all kinds of discoveries related to human origins, as they transpired this past year. I will follow up with a second part in a week or two with an observation and a comment.

In an earlier blog, “A pinky’s promise,” I wrote about the incredible discovery that was made early in 2010 when DNA analysis was performed on one small finger bone retrieved from a cave in Southern Siberia. The bone dated to a period (50,000 to 30,000 years ago) when all scientists assumed that the only living humans were either Homo sapiens sapiens or Neanderthals (perhaps we should now be saying Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, but I am getting ahead of the game). This first assumption proved to be wrong.

In 2008, DNA analysis carried out on a single finger bone revealed that there was a third species of human walking the earth at that time. Toward the end of 2010, this view was corroborated by additional DNA analysis of a few teeth that were found in the same Denisova cave. The Max Planck Institute in Leipzig announced that these so-called “Denisovans” represent a new species.
More interesting still, some of their DNA is still around: the “Denisovans” interbred with the ancestors of Melanesians. This implies that at one point, this third species was quite widespread in Asia. If these conclusions hold up, the lesson we should take away from this breakthrough is that every little scrap of evidence counts when studying human origins, even a single tooth, or a finger bone. I wonder how many single finger bones or teeth have been overlooked in the past, or are still awaiting re-discovery in a museum drawer somewhere.

Neanderthals were also in the news this past year. For years, researchers have been vexed by questions such as “Who were these people?”, “Where did they come from?”, “What made them extinct?” and last but not least “Is there a little bit of Neanderthal in (some of) us?”

With regard to the last question, also discussed in earlier blogs, the way in which we answer that question will result in a different scientific (read: Latin) nomenclature for Neanderthal. Allow for the possibility of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and also agree that their offspring was fertile, i.e., they successfully reproduced, then you would have to refer to Neanderthals as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. If you disagree with this idea, and think it was unlikely these two populations interbred, or that their offspring was not capable of producing fertile offspring, then you would have to refer to Neanderthals as Homo neanderthalensis. This classifies them as a species separate from modern humans; by definition, species cannot interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

The latter way of thinking was long popular among paleoanthropologists. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Scientists at the institute decoded the Neanderthal genome and compared it with that of modern humans. The result? In their words: “By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals.” In people speak: up to 4% of a European’s genetic makeup could be inherited from the Neanderthal lineage, now extinct.

Before you check for hair on your knuckles, thank (or blame) a single finger bone and a few teeth, as well as the staff at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany for all this.

Lest we all (well, at least those of us of European descent) break out in hives and run for the nearest hills, scientists were quick to add: “[T]he Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution.”

Certainly, 1 to 4% overlap in genetic makeup is not very much, but it is a whole lot more than we were willing to consider just a year ago. Differences between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis remain significant. The overall physical appearance of a modern human is very different from that of a Neanderthal. In terms of behavior, and cognitive abilities, the two subspecies also appear to be a world apart, never mind they shared portions of our planet.